NY: Knopf, 1999. Book. As New. Hardcover. Signed by Author(s). A signed 1st printing in publisher's slipcase, distributed privately prior to the release of the trade edition. With her keen eye, penchant for paradox, and yearning for truth, Dillard renews our ability to discover wonder in life's smallest-- and often darkest-- corners. Why do we exist? Where did we come from? How can one person matter? Dillard searches for answers in a powerful array of images: pictures of bird-headed dwarfs in the standard reference of human birth defects; ten thousand terra-cotta figures fashioned for a Chinese emperor in place of the human court that might have followed him into death; the paleontologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin crossing the Gobi Desert; the dizzying variety of clouds. Vivid, eloquent, haunting, For the Time Being evokes no less than the terrifying grandeur of all that remains tantalizingly and troublingly beyond our understanding. .

Synopsis

Following a novel, a memoir, and a book of poems, Annie Dillard returns to a form of nonfiction she has made her own--now, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.This personal narrative surveys the panorama of our world, past and present. Here is a natural history of sand, a catalogue of clouds, a batch of newborns on an obstetrical ward, a family of Mongol horsemen. Here is the story of Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin digging in the deserts of China. Here is the story of Hasidic thought rising in Eastern Europe. Here are defect and beauty together, miracle and tragedy, time and eternity. Dillard poses questions about God, natural evil, and individual existence. Personal experience, science, and religion bear on a welter of fact. How can an individual matter? How might one live?Compassionate, informative, enthralling, always surprising, For the Time Being shows one of our most original writers--her breadth of knowledge matched by keen powers of observation, all of it informing her relentless curiosity--in the fullness of her powers.From the Hardcover edition.

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Details

Bookseller: Peter Austern & Co. Books & Ephemera / Brooklyn Books (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #: 11gy
Title: For the Time Being
Author: Annie DILLARD [signed]
Format/Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: New As New
Jacket Condition: As New
ISBN 10: 0375403809
ISBN 13: 9780375403804
Publisher: Knopf
Place of Publication: NY
Date Published: 1999

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